|
 |
Germanic Collections
The German Area Collection: A Stanford
Tradition. From 'The Imprint' of the Stanford Libraries
Associates, Volume IX, Number I, April 1983
by PETER
R. FRANK, Curator Emeritus (1967-1990) of Germanic Collections at
Stanford
Since the beginning, in 1891, Stanford has had a special
commitment to teaching and research about the German parts of
central Europe. Today its German collection, including holdings
relating to Austria and Switzerland as well, like collections at the
Library of Congress and other large American libraries, is second
only to English material in size and scope. But when you consider
that California is almost halfway around the world from central
Europe, that Stanford is so much farther away from Berlin, Leipzig,
Vienna, or Zurich than Harvard, Yale, or the University of Chicago,
the breadth and depth of its German materials is surprising.
All
this did not come about by accident, of course. Nor was it by chance
that David Starr Jordan, first president of Stanford, chose a German
phrase, "Die Luft der Freiheit weht [Let the winds of freedom
blow]," as the official motto for Stanford's seal. Jordan had been a
student at Cornell University, which was one of the first American
universities to adopt the German seminar system. He considered the
German university a kind of model and took a lifelong interest in
German matters. Even Jordan's first published "works" (printed in
the student paper, Cornell Era) were translations of German
poems by Voss, Schlemiel, Goethe, and Heine. Shortly thereafter he
wrote a study of Ulrich von Hutten, a humanist writer at the turn of
the sixteenth century and author of the phrase that became the
Stanford motto.
Jordan's interest in things German is also
reflected in the first appointments he made. About half of the
original faculty members were either trained at German universities
or were native Germans, as for example Ewald Fluegel from Leipzig,
an eminent Chaucer scholar, who became head of the English
Department. In summing up the first ten years of the university,
Jordan wrote Mrs. Leland Stanford in March 1902: "We do a real
university work, in the German sense, and more will come in
time . . ."
This long tradition is felt to this day and has made
Stanford and the holdings of its libraries into a center for central
European studies. In 1938, Bayard Quincy Morgan, chairman of the
German Department, published through the Stanford University Press
the final edition of his Critical Bibliography of German
Literature in English Translation, the standard work in this
field. And just recently, two Stanford scholars, J. Murray Luck, who
was American cultural attache in Bern, Switzerland, and the
Austrian-born Kurt Steiner, published books about Modern
Switzerland (1978) and Modern Austria (1981) with the
cooperation of Swiss and Austrian colleagues.
Altogether there
are now about forty faculty members in various disciplines
interested in study and research on central European topics.
Prominent among them are Gordon A. Craig (author of Germany
1866-1945 and The Germans); Peter Paret (Clausewitz
and the State and The Berlin Secession); Reformation
scholar Lewis Spitz; Katharina Mommsen (author of books on Goethe,
dramatist Heinrich von Kleist, novelist Theodor Fontane, and
Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal); Lorenz Eitner (Art
Department); Martin Esslin (Drama); Van A. Harvey (Religious
Studies); and Hans Weiler (Education and Political Science), to name
but a few.
In recognition of these achievements, Stanford was
granted an endowed professorship for Austrian studies by the
Republic of Austria in 1976 and received a similar grant from the
Volkswagen Foundation and the Federal Republic of Germany for a
chair in comparative Western studies. In addition, German, Austrian,
and Swiss guest professors come regularly for one or two quarters to
teach courses in their fields. To give its under-graduates an
opportunity to learn the German language while living and studying
in a German environment, Stanford established its Overseas Studies
Program in 1958 with a campus in Beutelsbach (it has now moved to
the Muthesius-Villa in Berlin-West), and a similar campus in
Austria, first at the Semmering and now in Vienna. An exchange of
only a humble 23,000 volumes. At this time, Stanford faced a
serious financial crisis; essentially no money was available. And
yet, the private library of the late Professor Rudolf Hildebrand of
Leipzig was purchased for $5,500. This was done without the
knowledge or consent of Mrs. Stanford the acquisition was disguised
as a "gift." When Mrs. Stanford finally became aware that money was
solicited for the purchase from the trustees and even from her
personal friends, she was furious. She called President Jordan: ". .
. I cannot consent to purchase that German library . . ."
Fortunately, it was too late, and the collection of 4,605 volumes
and 1,052 pamphlets came to Stanford.
The last remnant of the
money had to be raised as late as November 1897, at a "Kirmes"
(country fair) where Mrs. Jessie R. Jordan, wife of the president,
and Herbert C. Nash, the librarian, directed and participated in a
farce, properly called "The Train Robbers." But the troubles were
not over. When the materials arrived, Prof. Julius Goebel from the
German Department, who had been instrumental in bringing this
collection to Stanford, considered it his private library and kept
large parts of it in his house. When he left Stanford in 1905,
several carloads of books, long overdue, finally came back to the
library.
With the acquisition of the Hildebrand library, Stanford
immediately had a solid collection of German books and journals,
mainly in the field of German language and literature. Professor
Hildebrand had long been an editor of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's
monumental Deutsches Wörterbuch [German Dictionary]. As
a good German professor, he evidently relied more on his private
collection than on Leipzig's libraries. And although his was a
working library, it contained a wealth of rare and valuable books
and journals. Its fourteen incunabula marked the beginning of
Stanford's incunabula collection. One of these, Maximilian I's
Ordnung des Heiligen Römischen Reiches [Statutes of the
Holy Roman Empire], printed in 1500 by Hieronymus Hoelzel in
Nuremberg, is the only copy in the United States. Four others are
duplicated by only one other institution in this country.
The
Hildebrand collection was especially rich in works of German
philology. It included 300 dictionaries and dialect dictionaries,
grammars, books on style, and the like. No less important was the
section on German literature, with some parts on theology,
philosophy, and history. There were valuable first editions from the
German classical and romantic periods and a notable core of
Reformation and baroque books. Finally, the collection contained
about zoo periodicals, from the seventeenth century through the
nineteenth.
For fifty years after the purchase of Hildebrand's
library, Stanford's German collection grew steadily, although there
was no real selection policy. The acquisitions were more sporadic
than systematic, often hampered by insufficient funds and lack of
staff. Excellent holdings existed in some areas but surprising gaps
in others.
Important additions often came by chance. In 1919, the
Hoover Library on War (now Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and
Peace) was founded at Stanford and became later a research institute
of its own. Concentrating first on material about World War 1, with
some emphasis on central Europe, its rapidly growing library and
archives have become an important collection of contemporary
history, with large stocks of books, periodicals, and secret
government materials. Covering the period roughly from 1871 to the
present, this collection is especially strong for the Third Reich
and for Germany and Austria after World War II. It includes such
unique items as the original diaries of Heinrich Himmler and Joseph
Goebbels, among others. Combined with the holdings of the
University libraries, this gives Stanford an unusually fine
standing in the field of modern and contemporary history and
politics.
Another unplanned acquisition occurred in 1922.
Professor Adolph Barkan from the Medical School donated to the
Lane Medical Library a collection on the history of medicine. The
manuscripts and books were mainly oriental, but because they were
once part of the famous collection of Professor Ernst Seidel in
Meissen, some German material came with them. It was also Barkan who
interested Prof. Karl Sudhoff of Leipzig, founder of the modern
scientific history of medicine, to advise Stanford on further
acquisitions. And for years a full card catalog of the Stanford
Collection on the History of Medicine was kept in Leipzig.
One of
the most spectacular gifts was presented to Stanford libraries in
1950, the Memorial Library of Music. Established in memory of
Ameri-can soldiers who died in World War II, it contains such
treasures as the autographs of one of the earliest Bach suites,
Mozart's Lodron Concerto and an aria from Tile Marriage of
Figaro, Beethoven's In Questa Tomba Obscure, Schubert's
Lied im Gruenen and the famous Rosamunden Overture, a
long letter from Wagner, Brahms's Tragic Overture, and the full
score of Johann Strauss's famous operetta Eine Nacht in
Venedig [One Night in Venice], as well as rare first editions of
orchestral and piano scores. (This collection includes of course
similar valuable items from other composers, too, from Purcell to
Stravinsky.)
Eight years later a collection of early recordings
was given to Stanford and formed the core of the Archive of Recorded
Sound, one of the great audio archives in this country. It preserves
also a wealth of material from German composers, conductors, and
performers, and, in spoken recordings, from authors, actors, and
such different public figures as Emperor Franz Joseph I and Adolf
Hitler.
Shortly after World War II, Stanford began to emerge from
its role as a major regional institution to become what it is today,
one of the world's leading universities. New programs were
developed, new faculty hired, and more students enrolled. The campus
libraries could not meet all the demands for research and teaching
materials. One critic even called the holdings those of a
"kindergarten library."
The needs were particularly great when it
came to supporting faculty and student interest in central Europe.
In the early 1960s Profs. Gordon Craig, Wayne Vucinich, and Gordon
Wright surveyed library holdings and needs for this area. When their
survey was completed, Professor Craig was quoted in the Stanford
Daily as follows:
"In history we really are dependent on what is in the
library. We don't need machines or equipment; what we need most of
all are books and magazines. In the field of history, we have a
pretty fair selection of secondary material, books. In official
papers and documents, we are in fair shape, but there are
astonishing holes. And in the level of scholarly magazines, we have
only the obvious, and not all of those. The reasons for this are
readily apparent. If you depend on professors to work for your
library, it will be spotty, with good collections in the professor's
[sic] specialty, and nothing else. This problem can only be checked
by having an adequate staff and by spending a lot of money."
The library had already recognized the state of affairs,
but it was not until 1963 that Elmer Grieder then associate director
of the library, created a new book selection mechanism, the
Resources Development Program. Known now as the Collection
Development Program (CDP), this program together with its selection
policy statement was so effective that it became a model for many
American research libraries. CDP started out with three foreign
language curators (for Romance, Germanic, and Slavic material) to
which later a Latin American office and numerous selectors for
various disciplines were added. This Collection Development Program
was an ingenious response to the challenge of a fast-growing
university program, and its impact was felt immediately. In the
German field, gaps were filled systematically.
There was other
unfinished business, too, some even dating back to the foundation of
the library. This included many books from the Hildebrand collection
and an enormous collection of German dissertations, both of which
were uncataloged. For over sixty years the library had received
German dissertations from almost all major German university
libraries. They had been packed away in boxes, and although some of
these items were important for research, only a few librarians knew
of their existence. They were not only uncataloged but also
inaccessible. A major effort was made in 1969 to screen these
approximately 80,000 items, and about 35,000 dissertations were
added to the collection. The earliest, in classics, dated from 1834.
Several of these dissertations had been written by scholars who
later became famous, among them physicist and Nobel laureate Gustav
Hertz, the classical scholar Hermann Fraenkel, the philosopher Max
Scheler, and the theologian Paul Tillich.
An important addition
was the purchase of approximately 400 books by writers from the
German Democratic Republic (or East Germany, as it was then called),
for a course given by Prof. Helmut R. Boehninger and others. In
1963, during the Cold War, teaching on the topic was rare in
American universities and of course controversial. The proletarian
and socialist past had been a neglected field, to say the least.
Since then, ma-terial from and about the GDR has become an integral
part of the Stanford collection, and many other books and journals
have been added.
In 1967 Stanford bought about 3,000 volumes and
1,260 broadsheets and leaflets that were formerly part of the famous
library of Max von Portheim and other distinguished collectors.
Portheim, who was from an old Jewish family in Prague, had brought
together what was considered the finest private collection of
Austrian materials, with a special emphasis on the Austrian
Enlightenment, the time of Joseph II. When the collection arrived at
Stanford, a great many items proved so valuable they had to be
transferred to Special Collections, including many samples of rare
broadsheets from the Napoleonic Wars and the Revolution of
1848-1849, and many valuable books, journals, and brochures.
Since then the Austrian collection has been systematically
supplemented and strengthened with holdings from the Reformation up
to the present time and with works by such authors as the
avant-garde poet Ernst Jandl and novelist and dramatist Peter
Handke. With the support of the Associates, correspondence between
Handke and his American translator, Michael Roloff, including proofs
and galleys of the translations with corrections by Handke, were
acquired in 1978. In the meantime, the part of the collection
covering the old monarchy and the Republic has become one of the
strongest and best in this country. This fact played an important
role in obtaining the Austrian professorship for Stanford. One of
the neglected areas within the German field has been Switzerland. In
1973, Stanford acquired a large collection that contained important
histories of this multinational country, large document editions,
and long sets of almanacs and annual reports of numerous cantons and
cities. The Swiss collection, too, has grown in si
lection of materials specifically devoted to Germany had almost
doubled. German programs at the university were considerably
strengthened, and new fields came into the focus of study and
research. All this required a more sophisticated strategy for the
further development of the collections. We began with a careful
evaluation program. The holdings were checked against bibliographies
and standard lists such as editions of German literature German
history from the Reformation to the Weimar period, and periodicals
of the eighteenth century. Although it was known that the
col-lection of German periodicals was strong, we were surprised that
Stanford had 35 percent of what was available in this country.
Hardly any major edition of German literature was missing, except
for two that were subsequently purchased. The holdings in history
were quite good, but the evaluation revealed some unexpected gaps,
most of which are now filled.
Because regional history is so important for such a
diversified area as Germany, we supplemented the existing collection
with regional and city histories, from Appenzell to Kiel, from
Mannheim to the Burgenland.
Language, literature, and history are, of course, the
most obvious fields for a German collection. But the scope at
Stanford is much broader and includes almost every important
discipline and topic from art and education to science and
technology. For research of his book on Königgrätz,
Professor Craig could rely on an extensive collection of regimental
histories and lists and other military materials, as did Professor
Paret for his book about Clausewitz. When women's studies began to
find attention in Germany, the library quickly bought sets of
relevant periodicals and other material. This supported later the
research for the anthology German Women Writers of the 20th
Century (1978) by Elizabeth R. Herrmann and Edna H. Spitz, and
Susan G. Bell's and Karen Offens two-volume documentary
interpretation Women, the Family, and Freedom, now in preparation at
the Stanford University Press.
Because Jews played such an
important role in German life and culture, Jewish holdings and those
dealing with antisemitism constitute another strong part in the
collection. The latter include such rarities as the report on the
first International Antisemitic Congress in Dresden in 1882. Social
and economic history has become of growing interest to historians
and collections of documents and histories of important banks,
industrial firms, and unions have been acquired, for example about
such well-known firms as CIBA, Krupp, AEG, and Porsche. The
publishing industry, always of great importance in German
intellectual life, is well represented with almanacs, histories, and
catalogs. And when the library made such spectacular acquisitions as
the Mary L. Schofield Collection of children's literature or
recently the Barchas Collection in the History of Science and Ideas,
one could be sure that they contained a fair share of German
material, too.
Several years ago it became apparent that the
German holdings of manuscripts, autograph letters, and first
editions had increased greatly in size and value. To make them more
prominent and accessible it seemed advisable to include them in one
collection. At the initiative of Professor Paret the Stanford
Collection of German, Austrian, and Swiss Culture was established in
1977. Numerous gifts and acquisitions have since been added.
Professor Paret presented what remains of the archive of the famous
Berlin art dealer and publisher Paul Cassirer, with typescripts and
autographs, printings of the Pan Presse, and most notably the
Protokollbuch [Minutes] of the Berlin Secession. From George
Hill of the Oxford publishing house of Bruno Cassirer we received a
copy of the judgment against Frank Wedekind's Büchse der
Pandora [Pandora's Box], one of the famous obscenity trials of
Wilhelminian Germany. (Wedekind's play was used by Alban Berg for
his opera Lulu.)
Stanford's collection of works from and
about the German area has three components holdings in the main
stacks, materials in the reference collection, and the especially
rare and valuable items in the Stanford Collection of German,
Austrian, and Swiss Culture. Taken together they comprise one of the
largest gatherings of German material in the United States. Although
they were assembled to support faculty and student research at
Stanford, because of their variety and richness they are now
attracting scholars from all over the world.
Last modified:
January 4, 2008
|
 |
